{"id":601453,"date":"2023-01-26T06:49:01","date_gmt":"2023-01-26T12:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/26\/generative-ai-wont-revolutionize-game-development-just-yet\/"},"modified":"2023-01-26T06:49:01","modified_gmt":"2023-01-26T12:49:01","slug":"generative-ai-wont-revolutionize-game-development-just-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/26\/generative-ai-wont-revolutionize-game-development-just-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Generative AI Won\u2019t Revolutionize Game Development Just Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Creating a video<\/span> game demands hard, repetitive work. How could it not? Developers are in the business of building world, so it\u2019s easy to understand why the\u00a0games industry<\/a> would be excited about generative AI. With computers doing the boring stuff, a small team could whip up a map the size of San Andreas. Crunch becomes a thing of the past; games release in a finished state. A new age beckons.<\/p>\n

There are, at the very least, two interrelated problems with this narrative. First, there\u2019s the logic of the hype itself\u2014reminiscent of the frenzied gold rush over crypto\/Web3\/the metaverse\u2014that, consciously or not, seems to consider automating artists\u2019 jobs a form of progress.<\/p>\n

Second, there\u2019s the gap between these pronouncements and reality. Back in November, when DALL-E was seemingly everywhere<\/a>, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz posted a a\u00a0long analysis<\/a> on their website touting a \u201cgenerative AI revolution in games\u201d that would do everything from shorten development time to change the kinds of titles being made. The following month, Andreessen partner Jonathan Lai posted a\u00a0Twitter thread<\/a> expounding on a \u201cCyberpunk<\/em> where much of the world\/text was generated, enabling devs to shift from asset production to higher-order tasks like storytelling and innovation\u201d and theorizing that AI could enable \u201cgood + fast + affordable\u201d game-making. Eventually, Lai\u2019s mentions filled with so many irritated replies that he posted a\u00a0second thread<\/a> acknowledging \u201cthere are definitely lots of challenges to be solved.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI have seen some, frankly, ludicrous claims about stuff that\u2019s supposedly just around the corner,\u201d says Patrick Mills, the acting franchise content strategy lead at CD Projekt Red, the developer of Cyberpunk 2077<\/em>. \u201cI saw people suggesting that AI would be able to build out Night City<\/a>, for example. I think we\u2019re a ways off from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even those advocating for generative AI in video games think a lot of the excited talk about machine learning in the industry is getting out of hand. It\u2019s \u201cridiculous,\u201d says Julian Togelius, codirector\u00a0of the\u00a0NYU Game Innovation Lab<\/a>, who has authored dozens of papers on the topic. \u201cSometimes it feels like the worst kind of crypto bros left the crypto ship as it was sinking, and then they came over here and were like, \u2018Generative AI: Start the hype machine.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that generative AI can\u2019t or shouldn\u2019t be used in game development, Togelius explains. It\u2019s that people aren\u2019t being realistic about what it could do. Sure, AI could design some generic weapons or write some dialog, but compared to text or image generation, level design is fiendish. You can forgive generators that produce a face with wonky ears or some lines of gibberish text. But a broken game level, no matter how magical it looks, is useless. \u201cIt is bullshit,\u201d he says, \u201cYou need to throw it out or fix it manually.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basically\u2014and Togelius has had this conversation with multiple developers\u2014no one wants level generators that work less than 100 percent of the time. They render games unplayable, destroying whole titles. \u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s so hard to take generative AI that is so hard to control and just put it in there,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A technique analogous<\/span> to generative AI will be familiar to a lot of gamers: procedural generation. Togelius says, for argument\u2019s sake, that he would be happy to say procedural generation is the same as generative AI (he describes their connection as \u201ckind of a sliding scale\u201d). But procedural generation typically doesn\u2019t use machine learning. Rather than an AI model, it runs on predetermined equations, generating, for example, the gargantuan cosmos of\u00a0No Man\u2019s Sky<\/em>. Developers also use software like SpeedTree, which, as its name suggests, conjures forests. The point is that procedural generation systems still require massive human supervision; developers must keep vigilant for unscalable crevasses or monstrous trees. And it\u2019s not even clear that replacing procedural generation with generative AI right now would make a noticeable difference.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThese things already exist,\u201d says Togelius. \u201cAnd it works because this content doesn\u2019t really need to function: It doesn\u2019t have functionality constraints. Maybe you can replace them with deep-learning-based stuff. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to make a big difference. Perhaps it will make some difference in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a general misunderstanding of where the tech is at, explains Mills. \u201cA fundamental reason why these generative AIs can\u2019t make something like Night City is because these tools are designed to produce specific outcomes,\u201d says Mills. \u201cA lot of people seem to be under the impression that these are somehow close to general intelligences. But that\u2019s not how it works. You\u2019d need to custom-build an AI that could build Night City, or open world cities in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a<\/span> failure to take into account the corporate landscape. Games still employ systems that grew from early technological limitations, like dialog or behavior trees. You can\u2019t just drop fancy machine learning into game franchises that have developed without generative AI in mind. Games\u2014in an industry with huge budgets and tight margins\u2014would need total redesigns to accommodate and take advantage of this technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Take, for example, non-player characters. Text-based generative AI tools seem like a great way to deepen conversation, and Togelius has been advising developers intrigued by this very idea. But it\u2019s not that simple. Characters based on these language models are liable to go off on tangents, discussing topics outside of the game\u2019s world. \u201cThis is super interesting, but it\u2019s also super hard,\u201d says Togelius. \u201cYou can\u2019t just drop it in there. It\u2019s not going to work. You can\u2019t expect the NPCs to behave in\u00a0Skyrim<\/em> or\u00a0Elden Ring<\/em> or\u00a0Grand Theft Auto<\/em> or your typical RPG. You have to design around the fact that they are, in some sense, uncontrollable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, there are some peripheral uses for generative AI right now. A good rule of thumb\u2014one that applies to procedural generation too\u2014is that the less crucial the content is, the more likely deep learning methods could be helpful. \u201cFor things like text generation, I could use this\u00a0today<\/em> to help generate filler for assets that aren\u2019t really meant to be the focus of the player\u2019s attention, like prop newspapers and such,\u201d says Mills.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Another appeal is<\/span> these tools\u2019 low barrier of entry, says Adrian Hon, the CEO and founder of independent games developer Six to Start and the co-creator of\u00a0Zombies, Run!<\/em> Procedural generation, at least as the term is typically understood, requires a coder; anyone can use tools like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. He can see how they could help with prototyping or mood-boarding during a game\u2019s early concept phase.<\/p>\n

But, Hon notes, many artists are skeptical of AI. Part of the backlash to the generative AI hype has been that these tools are modeling their output on the work of human creators. Some are even suing Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, claiming that Stable Diffusion, which powers Midjourney, was trained on images\u00a0used without permission<\/a>. \u201cObviously, there\u2019s a whole copyright question. We know about all these suits going on,\u201d he says. \u201cBut even if they get resolved, I think that there\u2019ll be some real upset among artists, which is understandable.\u201d<\/p>\n

As with so many discussions about automation, the hype here is detached from current reality (debates over automation usually arise during times of \u201cdeep anxiety about the functioning of the labor market,\u201d\u00a0writes sociologist Aaron Benanav<\/a>). But, leaving reality for a second, it\u2019s notable that much of the conversation around generative AI seems almost to revel at the prospect of replacing humans. Even an innocuous statement promising a boon for indie developers\u2014\u201cA small team can make a world the size of Red Dead<\/em>\u2019s,\u201d for example\u2014contains a kernel of this logic, explains Raphael van Lierop, the founder and creative director of independent studio Hinterland. It\u2019s reductive, suggesting the work of a large part of that large team is mindlessly robotic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe focus on generative AI is another facet of what feels like an attack on creators and the act of creation, one that is expressed in a lot of different ways in our society right now,\u201d he says. Reflecting a prevailing mood among artists across mediums, he sees nothing interesting about art made by an AI. \u201cIt\u2019s a dead end,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s definitely an unsettlingly inhuman element to all of this, one that you could imagine manifesting as a torrent of AI-generated shovelware run on predatory monetary systems. But at the higher echelons of game development, games created entirely by machines\u2014ones worth playing, at least\u2014are some way off. \u201cThe way some people say it\u2019s going to be used, to just suddenly replace people and do the whole job by itself, is bullshit,\u201d says Togelius. \u201cYou need humans.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\n Will Bedingfield<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Creating a video game demands hard, repetitive work. How could it not? Developers are in the business of building world, so it\u2019s easy to understand why the\u00a0games industry would be excited about generative AI. With computers doing the boring stuff, a small team could whip up a map the size of San Andreas. Crunch becomes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":601454,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28121,46,1583],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-601453","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-generative","8":"category-technology","9":"category-wont"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}